In Black and White

There it is, right there in black and white. Spelled rite and everything. My name, I mean. Right at the top of the article. Which tells the world that I’m a published writer.

There’s a magazine called Mountain Gazette which comes out of Frisco, just a couple of mountain passes over from my house. It’s a freebie and can be found at a number of locations around the Rocky Mountains although they apparently have subscribers all around the world. I first discovered it a year or so ago and immediately fell in love with the writing I found within.

Pretty much anything goes although mostly, it’s related in some way to mountain life. And it doesn’t even have to be the Rocky Mountains although the bulk of the articles do tend to be submitted by writers from the western US. Some of the greats have been published between its pages; Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Abbey and now, me.

A little while ago, on one of the most miserable evenings of my life, I hit and killed a deer while driving home. Up until then I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never hit anything other than insects and once, a long time ago, a suicidal rabbit who defied all my attempts to get round him. There have been a few inanimate objects I’m afraid; a trash can, the occasional fender-in-the-parking-lot and the wall of my parents’ driveway more than once while I was mastering the art of reversing round corners. But so far I’ve always managed to avoid hitting wildlife so killing the deer affected me profoundly.

Writing about it for The Gunsmoke Files was an act of self-indulgent catharsis in that I wanted to explore my own feelings and put down on paper the emotions tormenting me at the time. For once, I wasn’t writing my Blog for the entertainment of others, but purely for myself. I don’t think it took more than about twenty minutes to compose and other than correcting the typos and grammatical errors, no editing was required. Would that I could write that way more often. From feedback I’ve received, it sounds as though plenty of others found it as emotional to read as I did to write. Several people told me it made them cry, some shared their own deer vs. auto stories and more than a few suggested I investigate having my work published.

Problem is, not only have I never had my writing printed before; I’ve never even submitted anything and wasn’t entirely sure how to get started. I’ve read enough to know that magazine editors are frustrated by the number of submissions they receive which are totally inappropriate for their periodicals so dropping it in the mail to Teen Beat probably wasn’t going to cut it. Mountain Gazette however, seemed to be a perfect fit. I perused the masthead and discovered the helpful advice that all submissions must be delivered electronically, directly to the editor.

Sounded easy enough, so after adding my name, address, a brief summary and word count, along with my favorite color and shoe size just for good measure, I took a deep breath and hit the 'Send' button. Naturally, I spotted another grammatical error moments later (here’s a tip kids; write this down: "Get someone else to proof your work") but what the heck, it was away now. All I needed to do was await confirmation of publication and the subsequent Pulitzer Prize.

So I waited. And waited. And waited.

Again, being a rookie, I wasn’t sure of the protocol in such a situation. Should I e-mail them again and ask "Did you get it?" Re-send the article with a chirpy "Hey, I wasn’t sure if this went to the right address!" Or just sit on my hands like the seasoned veteran I’m not.

Tick, tick, tick.

But let’s suppose they’re not going to use it. It’s unlikely they’d contact the author of every rejected piece to say "Sorry, you lose." So at what point would it be acceptable to try submitting the article to another publication? Should I call the office? Drop by with doughnuts? I’m sure the modus operandi varies at every magazine, so what are the rules of the game for this one. It’s a stressful life being an unpublished writer, let me tell you.

Finally one day I received a very nice e-mail from a lady with a high-powered sounding title apologizing for the slow response but she’d been on vacation you see and was just catching up. Well there you go; what were you worried about? She also explained that it would take a while for her to get through all her correspondence but I’d probably hear something in the next 4-6 weeks. 4-6 weeks! Why, I’ll be...like...4-6 weeks older by then! Still, at least I knew for sure they’d got the darn thing so that was one less thing to worry about.

So, after making a note in my diary showing when week 6 was up, I went about my business, and stopped checking my e-mail two hundred times a day. Which meant I was caught a little off guard a couple of weeks later when I returned from a short business trip and found a frantic note from my friend telling me that they were almost at their print deadline and still hadn’t received my 'author bio'. Where was it?

In order to show that I’m an author in high demand, and not one to jump to the whims of any menial staffer, I waited oh, a good 10 or 15 seconds before responding with the information she needed. Well, actually I sent her way more than she needed so she replied with a suggestion for an edited version, which other than getting my Nationality wrong, seemed to cover all the bases. Then all I had to do was resist the urge to write back saying “So when’s it gonna be in? Huh, huh, huh? When’s it gonna be in?”

This month’s magazine was devoted specifically to articles on climbing so I resigned myself to having to wait yet another 4 weeks and who knows what might happen in that time. Perhaps they’d think “Oh yes, that’s the pillock who didn’t send us his author bio. Let’s call the printers and have them take that piece back out.” (Hey, it could happen). Which meant that my heart nearly beat through my rib cage when I opened the June edition and saw on page 9, my name.

Right at the top of the article. In black and white.